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Leyla Rzayeva

Artist Statement:

Art is a valuable medium for collaboration. As a printmaker, I place importance in collaborative work by sharing my ideas, technique, and resources. Currently, I am building a print shop that will serve my community as a place for providing art-making opportunities to the public.

Present project will be conducted with support of the Karabakh Foundation, a cultural charity foundation that seeks to increase awareness and understanding in the United States of the cultural heritage and traditions of the country of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus area, and the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. I plan create collaborative prints that speak to Azerbaijani identity. I would like to establish visual communication with Azerbaijani women in Baltimore and Baku to create prints/lithographs that explore our identity, memory, and cultural influences, using basic visual techniques such as cut and paste collage.

As an artist representative of the Karabakh Foundation, I value the foundation’s goals to share transformative experiences regarding the cultural, linguistic, historic, social, political, and global impact of Azerbaijan and its regions. I am fortunate to drawn upon cultural influence of Azerbaijan and Eastern United States in my creative process. During numerous trips to the Caucasus region, I have spent many days working from observation in local communities.